A 1593 Chaucer AllusionAuthor(s): Philip WilliamsSource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jan., 1954), p. 45Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3039712 .

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A 1953 CHAUCER ALLUSION 45

A 1593 CHAUCER ALLUSION

Unrecorded in Caroline Spurgeon's Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticismn and Allusion is the following, culled from Edmund Southerne's A Treatise Concerning the Right Use and Ordering of Bees (London, 1593):

Therefore my humble suite is, for that you have had some triall of my skill, as occasion shall serve, that you; will, in my behalfe, against such barking curs, remember, (this saying of Chaucer) Let them speake what they will, but trust well this: a wicked tongue will ever say amisse.

(Sig. A2v)

Southerne would seem to be in error in attributing the couplet to Chaucer; at least, it is not to be foLnd in the Chaucer concordance, nor do I find it in the apocryphal works attributed to Chaucer in the 16th century. The second line of the couplet has an obviously proverbial ring, but I do not find the proverb recorded in either The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs or Tilley's A Diction- ary of the Proverbs in England. The nearest approach is " A false tongue will hardly speak truth" for which Tilley (T 383) gives a 1616 citation.

Southerne, who writes in a pleasantly colloquial style with the gusto of a dedicated apiarist, sprinkles proverbs liberally through- out his work. I note an early appearance of " Far fetcht and deare bought is good for Ladies " (Tilley, D 12), and " The cat should wet her feete if she will eate any fish" (Tilley, C 144). The book will almost certainly yield other examples to proverb collectors.

PHILIP WILLIAMS Duke University

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